Girl's Pillowcase Dress Tutorial

Sewing projects for Emily are just so quick and easy.  No fitting around curves and messing with yards of fabric to get a satisfactory result. Just an old pillowcase, but my, what a lovely pillowcase it is.  Now Emily has  a dress made out of bedsheets too! ;-)

Supplies: One pillowcase (or sham, if you prefer), and one package of seam binding.  You can also make your own bias tape.

Why do people not make bedding like this anymore?

1) Cut off the seam at the end of the pillowcase //  2) Get a shirt that fits your little girl (cute, right? :-)

3) Measure from neck to underarm // measure from side to edge of front

*Ok, this might get confusing.  Go the finished project and get a good look at it, then look at step 5 and imagine how it is going to become the dress.  Worst case, read the whole thing and then come back here. :-)*

In the above left, the two red pins at 3 1/2 and 4 1/2 represent where I want the dress neckline (4 1/2) and how much fabric I actually need (3 1/2) because of the casing we are going to make.

Also in the above left, the line of pins at 7 inches represents the underarm line.

On the right we have where I want the dress "bodice" edge to come to; the edge of the front.

4) Move measurements to pillow

Now all these numbers will be different on your girls shirt.  Make sure you're using a shirt that fits!

Above we have a picture of how we are using all the numbers.  First of all, I messed up.  That green pin at 3 1/2 inches?  That should be at 4 1/2.  Imagine it is at 4 1/2.  (Yes!  I do have three different tape measures.  Stay focused people, you only need one.)

Okie dokie.  The top horizontal measure is 3 inches, that is our side to edge of front measurement from the right picture.  The edge we are pinning is the same one we cut at the very beginning of the tutorial, the closed (now open) edge opposite the wide hem. Because now we don't have to hem it!  Yippee!)

The pink vertical measure represents the left picture.  Why doesn't it start at the top?  Because we had those two pink pins.  The top of our pillowcase needs to start at the top pink pin.  So we take the underarm measurement (7" in my case) and subtract the amount from the top pink pin to the top of the shirt (in my case it is still 3 1/2 inches because 7 divides evenly like that).  What is left, (3 1/2) is what you measure from the top of your pillowcase.

5) Fold pillowcase in half lengthwise so that you can cut both corners off at the same time.

6) Cut in an arc.  Cut from one pin to the other so that the line left behind is concave, not straight.

7) Sweet!  Nice job.  Open up the pillowcase to reveal your lovely semicircles.  Bind them with your...binding.

8) On both the front and back  top edges, create a casing by folding it down an 1/8 inch, and then another 3/4 or so.  Just enough to comfortably fit your binding through. Sew them down very close to the edge forming your casing.

It looks so pretty!

9) Sew two 2 ft section of binding to create your ties and pull one through each casing.  And you're done!

It will make pretty gathers that should accommodate your little girl for quite a while.

To make the ties into straps you just tie the front to the back at each end.

Front // Back

If you look closely at the front (above) you'll see that I also added a little pocket.  Little, because I made it with those scraps we cut out for the armholes.  Yup.  "Waste no, want not," they say!

(The pocket isn't on in the pictures where she is trying it on.  I used my extra binding and made a sash for a little waist definition and I LOVE it.

Front // Back

I'll update with pictures after she wears it this summer.  Somehow I don't believe I could convince her to wear it outside in front of our igloo. 

Summer Play Dress Refashion

I was studying for my Biology CLEP last week and needed a break, so I decided I would try making up a dress for Emily with some low-risk material and exercise the creative part of my brain.  There is probably 2 feet of snow outside so, of course, the obvious thing to do is make a summer dress. :-)

Fabric: Old drawstring capris and ill-shapen white tee. Both of these were going to be thrown out and donated, respectively, so I figured I couldn't go wrong just experimenting. :-)  Here is what I did.

Emily's Purple Holiday Gown

*accessorized with a black bolero and aviators. ;-)

Pattern: Butterick 4967
Supplies:  All scrap fabrics!  There is some chiffon, satin, knit, jersey, taffeta, some rayon stuff, and some cotton weave for the lining part.

Some of the fabrics are from projects I haven't blogged yet, like the Arabella, but others are from projects I made for other people or scraps picked up along the way.  The taffeta was from this masquerade gown a couple years ago, remember?  The piece that I couldn't quite squeeze out of my scraps was the dark purple knit in the middle.  That is from a length of cloth that I'll be making a dress out of in the somewhat near future. We'll see how busy school is. :-)

I love this style on, well, everybody, but especially little girls.  The problem is, Emily is 8 already.  She is very tall.  And this pattern I have is only sized to size 6... I really wanted to make it though and loved the idea of using scraps, so I did some math and lengthened each tier accordingly.  It was all very helter-skelter, but I'm so happy with the way it turned out.

Denim Play Skirt

Clothes for little kids are so quick and easy to make!  This skirt took about 2 hours.  

The 8 flared gores are cut from 2 different pairs of old jeans, serged together and top-stitched.

I saved the top of one of the pairs to make a tiered skirt for myself sometime later.

Add a simple elastic waistband...

Zigzag and start a frayed hem...

and Emily has a new skirt to play in!

That's how we roll.

Belle - A Princess dress for Emily

Pattern: Butterick 4320

Fabric:  All stuff from my stash!  

-Yellow flowered leno shirting from fabric.com

-Yellow lace table cloth from Sharestuff (a thrift store) used for this dress too.

-Yellow criss-cross stitched cotton for bow left over from this dress years ago.

-miscellaneous yellow fabrics that I only had enough for one bow out of each.

-yellow lining or different kinds leftover from all sorts of things

-bodice lining from an old yellow tee shirt :-)

Emily says her favorite part is the shawl looking collar attachment.  I made this in 2 days on and off because Emily was actually very sick at the time and I was watching her and the house at the same time.  We were going to go to a friend's disney princess birthday party 5 days hence so I dug in my stash of fabric and scraps and whipped this up.  As it turned out she was still ill and could not go. :-(  But she got Belle dress out of it so she is pretty happy about that.  It is a little big on her now because of the weight she lost, but it'll fit right soon enough.

So it isn't exactly like Belle's from the movie but it is close enough. :-)

The bows are of different fabrics because of my scraps pile, but I kinda like it.

All of the bows are handsewn to the overskirt.  I did notice that they have you gather the back-most seam but don't have you make a bow for it.  I just un-gathered it because I didn't have any more scraps to make another bow out of. :-)

It is very full and she loves to spin. :-)

The Back

This dress was so simple to put together.  I would categorize it as easy.  The only hard part for me was putting in the invisible zipper and making sure everything was lined up right.  I don't know if the pattern even called for an invisible zipper though, I just like the way it looks...or doesn't look.

In this picture I still have to add a hook and eye.  The bodice is fitted with darts in the front and back which means you don't need to cut three pieces for the front and 4 for the back.  Which is nice.  Sewing for little people is so stress free. :-)  Except that they grow out of things...

With a couple petticoats under this it would get quite full. :-)

While Emily doesn't need another Belle costume for quite some time, if ever, I will definitely use the pattern again and modify it to make some more dresses in the future.

Curtsy!

Her new favorite necklace. :-)

Emily's Renaissance Outfit

Cute and she knows it. :-)

Fabric

Shirt: leftover kona muslin form my renn. top

Vest: leftover fabric from a skirt I made a while ago

Skirt: Brown sheet type stuff that was given to us

Grommets we had, elastic we had, and lacing we already had.

All in all, a pretty inexpensive adventure. :-)

Pattern

I made up the skirt, drafted the shirt form a drawing, and made the vest by shrink the ladies vest from Simplicity 3809.

I don't remember the fine detail of the vest shrink, but I measured Emily and then redrew the pattern on paper.  Then I modified some lines and made a mock-up.  It fit well, so I basically followed the pattern's directions for lining the vest and it was done!  I did not put any boning in it, but I did put a double layer of cord in the very front to add stability to the grommets.

For the skirt I sewed 6 rectangle that were each around 17 inches wide together, hemmed it, and made a casing for elastic at the waist.  Simple.

For the shirt I looked at the diagram drawing of the off-the-shoulder blouse in the same pattern (Simplicity 3809).  Basically the front and back pieces are rectangles with the upper corners cut off and rounded.  The sleeves were a full sleeve looking pattern with the tops cut off in a straight line.   I then sewed a casing on the inside and sewed the elastic into it when I sewed the ends together.  So the sleeves were sewn the the "rectangles" and the top edges of everything were turned under to make a drawstring casing. :-)  Clear as mud?  Yeah, I thought so.  Oh for a computer drawing program.  Soon. :-)  Very soon.

I LOVE the way it looks from the back.

Here she is wearing another skirt underneath it and it got bunched up in the back.  I think it actually makes it look nice. :-)

Gathering and arms=not so even

Oh, and don't forget to hem your sleeves and the bottom of your shirt. :-)

Lacing.

Ta Da!